I’m crying

Men Have Called Her Crazy is Anna Marie Tendler’s memoir in which she deals with mental health issues and the patriarchal society we live in. We follow Anna to a psychiatric hospital following a year of unhealthy coping mechanisms for anxiety and depression. We follow her journey as she takes assessment after assessment and numerous therapy sessions. We watch as she creates connections with the girls she meets while there. 

Juxtaposed with her hospital stay, we are taken on a tour of tortured romances past. We see the relationships that form Anna’s distrust of men. We see how those relationships shaped her adulthood and watch her make important life choices like freezing her eggs while her friends are starting families. 

Like all memoirs, I thank Anna for the courage to tell her story in her own words. She owed no one a look at her stay in the hospital and her history of mental health issues, but she gave it to us. I loved the exploration of her hospital stay. The comforting mundanity she experienced and the girls she met and instantly bonded with. I think those were some of the strongest chapters in the book. The female solidarity runs deep. 

The chapters where we explore Anna’s past relationships at once compelling, quickly turn repetitive around the last 30% of the book. I feel she discounts all the work she does in the first 60% of the book by bringing a woe is me attitude into the writing. I understand that men, as thought of by the gender binary, are the root of most if not all societies problems. However, the I hate men discourse included in this memoir feels counterproductive. Saying this is no way shape or form of me discounting the abuse she endured at the hands of men, I believe her and every horrific story she’s told. I just feel she could have done more of an inward take on the issue and not just a surface level take. We all hate men I just wish it were spoken in the beauty the first 60% of the book were. 

Another major issue I had with this memoir is Anna’s lack of awareness of her privilege. She attempts to acknowledge class privilege at certain points throughout the memoir, I just feel, once again it was spoken with more depth. 

Overall I liked, but did not love this one. I am thankful to Netgalley and Simon & Shuster for the ARC!  

American Rapture tells us the story of good Catholic girl Sophie trying to navigate a hellish world where a virus is spreading across America. This virus is making everyone feral with lust. She is journeying across the Midwest in search of her family. Along the way she meets a ragtag team of people also trying to survive as the world burns around them. 

I devoured this book. As someone who grew up in the Midwest in a very sheltered and controlled religious household I saw way too much of my own life reflected back at me. Religion has this way of trapping you in it, even when you know what you’re learning and being fed contradicts itself and seems false it’s a stick trap to escape. And as Sophie tries to navigate this lustful hell she can’t help but view it through her Catholic lens. Eventually, if you’re lucky, those raised religious find their way out and learn to live life on their own terms. It was fascinating to watch Sophie navigate those emotions all while this virus ravages the world around her. 

This story is heartfelt, honest, brutal and horrific. Thank you netgalley and Tor Publishing Group. Thank you CJ for your honest writing and for continuing to grow, learn and share your writing with the world. We need more baddies in horror! 

American Rapture is out October 15th, but you can preorder your copy today like I did 25% through the book! 🤍